Chapter X: Part THREE: The End of Lean Wisdom (2)

Florian went forward intrepidly, once he had loosened Flamberge in the scabbard. But this was not Hoprig. It was, instead, an incredibly old man in faded blue, who carried upon his arm an open basket filled with small roots. At his heel came a blue and white dog. The old man looked once at Florian, with peculiarly bright eyes, like the eyes of those who had watched the Feast of the Wheel, and he passed without speaking. The dog paused, and without making any noise, sniffed about Florian’s legs once or twice, as if this inspection were a matter of duty, and then followed this old man who had about his head a shining. It was odd, but the dog made no noise when he sniffed thus close to you; and neither the man in blue nor the blue and white dog made any least noise as they passed through the thick and tangled vines underfoot; nor did their passing at all move these vines which caught at the buckles of Florian’s shoes so that he was continually tripping. These things rendered it difficult to believe that the man and the dog could be wholly natural.

And still those pertinacious midges danced before Florian’s eyes: and he was tired of slapping at them without ever driving them away. Morven did not appear a merry place, upon this the last day of April, as Florian toiled through Morven’s thickening twilight, in search of Holy Hoprig’s hermitage, wherein was now the child that Florian had need of.

_26._

_Husband and Wife_

Toward evening Florian came into the saint’s hermitage. Inside, it proved a most comfortable hermitage, having walls builded of logs with the interstices filled with plaster. It seemed rather luxuriously furnished, to Florian’s glance, which took exact note of nothing more specific than the skull upon the lectern and the three silver-gilt candelabra. These twelve candles, as you came in from the twilight, made the room quite cosy. Florian did not, however, look at the room’s equipment with the interest he reserved for his wife.

Melior sat there, alone except for the newborn child in her lap. At the sound of Florian’s entrance she had drawn the child closer, raising her blue mantle about it in an involuntary movement of protection: and as she faced him thus, Florian could see, without any especial interest, that with motherhood all her lost beauty had returned. It seemed inexplicable, but Melior was, if anything, more lovely than she had ever been: it was probably one of Hoprig’s miracles: and Florian found time to wonder why he should be, so unquestionably and so actively, irritated by the sight of a person in everything so pleasing.

Neither spoke for a while.

“I thought that you would be here before long: and all I have to say is that I wonder how you can look me in the face,” observed Melior, at last. “Still, that you should be so bent upon your own destruction that you have followed us even here, does, I confess, astonish me. Why, Florian, have you no sense at all!”

“My dearest, you underestimate the power of paternal affection.” Florian came to her, and gently uncovered the child’s face. The baby, having supped, was asleep. Florian looked at it for a moment and for yet another moment. He shrugged. “No: I am aware of none of the appropriate emotions. The creature merely seems to me unfinished. Its head, in particular, has been affixed most unsatisfactorily; and I lament the general appearance of having been recently boiled. No, I sacrifice little.”

Melior put the sleeping child into the cradle yonder, a cradle which Florian supposed that Hoprig must have created extempore and miraculously when a cradle was needed. It hardly seemed the most natural appurtenance of an anchorite’s retreat.

Then Melior turned, and she regarded Florian with her maddening air of dealing very patiently with an irrational person.

“Do you actually think, Florian, that, now, you can harm the little pet? Florian, that is one fault you have, though I am far from saying it is the only one. Still, as I so often think, no one of us is perfect: and perpetual fault-finding never gets you anywhere, does it? Even so, Florian, there is no denying you do not like to take a common-sense view of the most self-evident facts when the facts are not quite what you want them to be, and that much I feel I ought to tell you frankly. Otherwise, Florian, you would comprehend at once that I have only to cry out to St. Hoprig, who is back yonder chopping the wood to cook our supper, after those cherubs were positively rude about being asked to do it, and then he will blast you with a miracle.”

She had gone back to her outlandish mediæval clothing. He recognized, now, the dreadful gown she was wearing the morning he first came to her upon the mountain top,—that glaring, shiny, twinkling affair, which reminded you of an Opera dancer’s costume in some spectacular ballet. For a Duchess of Puysange to be thus preposterously attired was unbecoming, and was in quite abominable taste.

“First, madame,” said Florian, with a vexed, rather tired sigh, “let us explain matters. I have loved you since my boyhood, Melior, with a love which no woman, I think, can understand. For I loved you worshipfully, without hope, without any actual desire: and I loved you, by ill-luck, with a whole-heartedness which has prevented my ever loving anything else. It is droll that a little color and glitter and a few plump curves, seen once and very briefly, should be able to make all other things not quite worth troubling about. But the farce is old. They used to call us nympholepts; and they fabled that the beauty which robbed us of all normal human joys was divine. Well, I have no desire to discuss the nature of divinity, madame, nor to bore you with any further talking about what no woman understands. It suffices that I loved you in this pre-eminently ridiculous fashion; and that a way was offered me by which I might very incredibly win to you.”

To which Melior replied: “You mean about your bargaining with Janicot, I suppose, and I am sure I never heard of such nonsense in my life. Why, Florian, to think that the moment I let you out of my sight, even if it was a little while before I first actually saw you, because that does not in the least alter the principle of the thing,—quite apart from its happening the same morning, anyhow,—that you should be mixing yourself up with such people! It is positively incredible! But, as for your supposing that I am going to let you and your Janicots lay one finger on my precious lamb—!”

“Madame,” he replied, “let us be logical! I can conceive of no possible reason why you should especially value this child. It may be no more repulsive looking than other babies: that is a point upon which I cannot pretend to speak with authority. But it is certainly not in itself an attractive animal. And your acquaintance with it, dating only from this morning, is far too brief to have permitted the forming of any personal attachment. For the rest, this bargain with Monsieur Janicot is an affair in which I have given my word. I can say no more. It is in your power, of course, to summon my patron saint, who, from what I know of him, will probably attempt to coerce me into rank dishonesty; and in that case the issue remains doubtful. The most probable outcome—need I say?—in view of his boasted proficiency in blasting, cursing and smiting, seems my annihilation. Would you, madame, who are of royal blood and are born of a race that is more than human,—would you have me, on that account, hold back in an affair in which my honor is involved?”

“Why, Florian, since you are asking my advice, I think it is not quite nice to speak of the power of a saint as being at all doubtful. We both know perfectly well that he would resent any impudence from you with a palsy or an advanced case of leprosy or perhaps a thunderbolt, and make things most unpleasant for everybody. And besides, it is just as well to avoid the subject of doubtfulness, because after talking with your other wives, I confess, Florian, that I have the very gravest doubts as to what you are planning to have become of me.”

“You will vanish, madame, after the usual custom of your race. I am sure I do not know whither the Léshy usually vanish.”

“I decline to vanish. Now that I am a Christian, Florian, I should think that even you would know I must decline to take any part in any such silly and irreligious proceedings—”

To which he answered patiently, “But I have given my word, madame.”

And still this obstinate woman clung to her pretence that he was behaving irrationally. She said, with an effect of being almost sorry for him:

“My poor Florian! now but let us be perfectly friendly about this. I am disposed to bear no malice, because, as I so often think, what is the odds? In the long run, I mean—”

“Madame, it is my misfortune never quite to know what you mean.”

“Why, I mean that we all make mistakes, and that it is to be expected, and the least said about it, the soonest mended. Besides, as I was telling you, I do not know of course who it was that first set women upon a pedestal, and even if I did, I would be willing to overlook his mistakes too—”

“But you have not been telling me about this over-imaginative unmarried person! You were talking about malice and vanishing—”

“—Still, I certainly would not thank him, because I have had to pay for that mistake, even more heavily than women do now. Ah, Florian, as I so often think, it is always the woman who pays! For, you conceive, in my first life, back at Brunbelois, I mean, in those perfectly awful days of chivalry, I used to be worshipped, or at least that was what it came to in practise, as a symbol of heavenly excellence—”

Florian said, with an attempt at gallantry, “I can well imagine—”

“Oh, it was without any actually personal application, you understand: it was just that all ladies were regarded in that light. It was considered that in making women Heaven had revealed the full extent of Heaven’s powers. So they made us sit upon uncomfortable thrones at their tournaments—”

“But,” Florian protested, “these honorable and extremely picturesque customs—”

“My dear, that is all very well! but they used to last for a week sometimes. And there we would have to sit, from six to seven hours a day, with canopies but no cushions, and with no toilet conveniences, and with nothing whatever to do except to watch them sticking and poking and chopping one another in order to show how they respected us,—though I could never understand just how that came in, because my back hurt me too much, apart from my other troubles—”

“But as a symbol—” This horrible woman seemed resolved to leave him no one last shred of his dream.

“It was not the symbolism I objected to, Florian, but the endless inconvenience. The tournaments were only a part of it; and of course even after them you could get liniment, and you soon learned not to drink anything with your breakfast. But they walked off with your sleeves and handkerchiefs, with or without your leave: and when you go to put on your gloves, let me tell you, it is most annoying to find that the other one is several miles away in somebody’s helmet—”

“Now,” Florian said, yet more and more shocked, “you illogically apply prosaic standards to the entirely poetic attitude of chivalry—”

“Oh, as for their poetry, telling what marvelous creatures they thought us, they were all over the place with it. That was trying enough in the day-time: but when it came to being waked up long before dawn, and prevented from getting a wink of beauty-sleep at night, by their aubades and serenas about how wonderful you were, I do assure you, it was really very tiresome—”

“I can see that.” Logic compelled the admission, however repulsive it was to find a woman blundering into logic. “But, still, madame—”

“Yes, you can see that, Florian, now, because you now comprehend you have been as foolishly exaggerative as any of them. Florian, you are a romantic: and from the first that has been the trouble, because it was that which made you fall in love with your notion of Melior. That was just what you did, without even having talked with me—”

“Parbleu, but certainly it was without having heard you talk—”

“And as far as it went, it was quite nice of you, Florian, for you appear even to have imperilled your soul—which, to be sure, must have been in a rather dangerous way already,—through your desire to have me for your wife. Nobody thinks of denying that was a very pretty compliment, but, if you ask me, it was a mistake—”

This seemed to Florian such a masterpiece in the art of understatement that he said almost sullenly, “We needs must love the highest—”

“Nonsense, Florian, I am far from being the highest. And so, let me tell you, is any other woman. After a month or two of sleeping with and mooning around me,—who, you must do me the justice to admit, never laughed at you once, though I do not deny that I was tempted, for, Florian, my dear, it seems only fair to tell you that at times you are simply—! But then, it is not as if other men were very different—”

“Let us,” said Florian,—who was reflecting that he had never really detested anybody before he met this woman,—“let us turn to more profitable topics than masculine romanticism—”

“So you made the appalling discovery that I did not belong upon a pedestal. That was inevitable, though I must say it was not as if I had endeavored to hide it from you. And you resented it fiercely. That too, I suppose, was only you romantic men all over, though it was just as foolish as the mooning. And from what I can gather, you appear to have been equally rash and—if you do not mind my saying so, dear,—equally inconsiderate, in your treatment of your other wives. Though, to be sure, whatever you could see in those women, even at the first—!”

“I am a Puysange. We are ardent—”

“In any event, it is not as if anything could be done about them now. So, really, Florian, taking one consideration with another, I do not see why, now that we have talked it over amicably, and you have more or less explained yourself,—and, I am willing to believe, are quite properly sorry,—we should not get on tolerably well. And about men I say nothing, because one does want to be kind, but I doubt if any woman anywhere really hopes for more than that when she marries.”

Melior had stopped talking. Not that fact alone had roused Florian to chill amazement. He said, “You plan, madame—?”

“Why, first of all, I plan for both of us to appeal, in a suitably religious and polite manner, to your patron saint. That is the plain duty of a Christian. For if this Janicot has any real claim upon the little darling, you surely must see how much nicer it would be, in every way, for Hoprig to be working miracles against him instead of smiting you with something unpleasant. And besides, I do not see how he can have any real claim—”

Florian resolutely thrust aside the suspicion that this obstinate and shiny and gross-minded woman was now planning, among other enormities, to return to living with him. He said only:

“I am astounded. I am grieved. You would have me meanly crawl out of my bargain by invoking the high powers of Heaven to help me in a swindle, very much as one hears of dishonest persons repudiating fair debts through the chicanery of a death-bed repentance. Pardieu, madame! since you suggest such infamies, and since you will not hear reason, I can but leave you, to defy this Hoprig to his ugly nose, and to perish, if necessary, upon his woodpile with untarnished faith.”

He turned sadly from this woman who appeared to have no sense of logic or honor, not even any elementary notion of fair-dealing. And as Florian turned, he saw the door open, and through the doorway came first an armful of faggots and behind it the flushed but still benevolent face of Hoprig.

_27._

_The Forethought of Hoprig_

“Come now,” said St. Hoprig, as he laid down the wood, “but here is that abominable ward of mine! and upon the point of defying me too!” Whereon he shook hands cordially with Florian.

“Ah, but, monsieur,” said Florian, “be logical! We meet as enemies.”

“Frequently,” observed the saint, “that is the speediest way of reaching a thorough understanding. I suppose that you have come about your foolish bargain with Janicot.”

“Upon my word,” replied Florian, “but all my business affairs appear to be well known to everybody upon Morven!”

The saint had turned to Melior, with a wise nod. “So, you perceive, madame, our precautions were justified. Now, my dear son, do not worry any more about your contract with the powers of evil, but off with your things, and have some supper with us. For I have excellent news for you. You were to sacrifice to Janicot the first child that you and Madame Melior might have, and she was then to vanish. Your bargain is void, or, rather, the terms have not yet been fulfilled.”

Florian looked forlornly at his wife, then toward the cradle, and he said, “I fail to perceive the omission, Monsieur Hoprig.”

“Luckily for human society, my son, a great many persons are similarly obtuse.”

“Ah,” said Florian, “but let us have no daring coruscations of wit where plain talking is needed.”

“I must tell you, then,” the saint continued, “that, when my suspicions were aroused at Brunbelois, I communicated with higher powers, and the Recording Angel obliged me with a fair copy of your first interview with Janicot. He objected to giving it: but I stood up for my rights as a saint, and in the end, after some little unpleasantness, he did give it. One really has to be firm with these angels, I find, in order to get the least bit of service. After that, at all events, the way to foil your wicked scheme was clear enough: in fact, it was the one possible way to prevent, without open scandal, your begetting of a child upon your wife for deplorable purposes. I advised the Princess to follow this way, and to make sure before marrying you that you should win to her embraces a bit too late to be the father of her child.”

“That seems to be unprecedented advice,” said Florian, sternly, “to have come from a saint of the Calendar.”

He tried, at least, to speak sternly: but a dreadful thought had smitten him, and Florian knew that he, who had wondered what people meant when they talked about fear, had done with wondering.

“It was for your own good and eternal salvation,” observed Melior, “though, to be sure, all men are like that, and, as I often think, the more you do for them the less they seem to appreciate your trouble—”

Florian said only, “May I inquire, madame, without appearing unduly intrusive, who was your collaborator in arranging this infant’s début?”

“Why, but of course she received all the necessary assistance,” replied St. Hoprig, “from me. I never grudge the efforts necessary to a good action of this sort: and all night long, my son, I labored cheerfully for your salvation. For it was my plain duty as your celestial patron to save you, at any cost, from falling into grave sin: and, besides, it was a matter hardly to be entrusted to any other gentleman without considerable possibilities of scandal.”

Florian looked from one to the other. “So it was to prevent scandal that my wife and my patron saint have put together their heads: and beauty and holiness—they also!—must combine to avoid offending against the notions of the neighbors. You will permit the remark that here is ambiguous logic.”

“Ah, but my dear,” replied Melior, “can you with logic deny that we did it for your own good? So often, when affairs look wrong, if you will just regard the spirit of the thing—”

“Madame,” said Florian, without unkindliness, “let us not argue about that. I am sure you were persuaded as to the spirit of the thing, when no doubt Monsieur Hoprig went into it at full length—”

Yet Florian spoke perturbedly, for in his heart remained despair and terror. To find that he had been hoodwinked was not a discovery to upset a person used to the ways of the world and of more wives than he had ever married: to be hoodwinked was the métier of husbands. Moreover, reflection had already suggested that the saint had followed the honorable old tradition of various nations who deputed exactly the task which Hoprig had spared Florian to their most holy persons.

Florian took snuff. With his chin well up, he inhaled luxuriously....

Yes, Florian reflected, there were priests everywhere,—the Brahmans of Malabar, the Piaches of the Arawaks, the Dedes of Lycia, the Chodsas of the Dersim uplands, and the Ankuts of the Esquimaux,—to all these priests was formally relegated the performing of this task when a woman was about to marry. Every part of the world wherein mankind remained unspoiled by civilization, reflected Florian, afforded an exact and honorable precedent: and he could advance no ground for complaint. For one was logical. Certain physical reservations were made much of, to be sure, in Holy Writ and in the sermons preached in convents to auditories of schoolgirls. And this theory perhaps did no great harm. But, after all, there was a grain of folly in this theory that to-day’s letters still in the post contained of necessity more virtuous matter than did yesterday’s letters, whose seals had been broken. No, let us be logical about this theory.

He closed his snuff-box. The lid bore the portrait of poor Philippe. He regretted Philippe, who had been destroyed with no real gain to anybody. Florian slipped the box into his waistcoat pocket....

Hoprig’s painstaking forethought, then, gave a philosopher no ground for wonder or dissatisfaction. But none the less, in the heart of Florian was despair and terror. The terms of his bargain had not been fulfilled, and the one course open to a gentleman who held by his word was to go on living with his disenchanted princess for, at the very least—he estimated, appalled,—another full year.

Florian extended his right hand, dusting the fingers one against the other. He liked those long white fingers. But this was simply dreadful: and he would have to speak now, he would have to say something. They were both waiting. Negligently he straightened the Mechlin ruffles at his throat....

Then with a riotous surge of joy, he recollected that the current conventions of society afforded him a colorable pretext to provoke the saint into annihilating him. As against continuing to live within earshot of Melior’s insufferable jabbering,—as against a year of hourly frettings under a gross-minded idiot’s blasphemies against the bright and flawless shrine of beauty which she inhabited,—the everywhere betrayed romantic had still the refuge of bodily destruction in this world and damnation in the next. And all because of a graceful social convention! all because of one of those fine notions which, precisely as he had always contended, made human living among the amenities of civilization so much more comely and more satisfying than was the existence of such savages as lived ignobly with no guide except common-sense. The Piaches and the Brahmans and the Ankuts were all savages, and their obscene notions were wholly abominable.

“Madame,” said Florian, with his best dignity, “whatever the contrast between the purity of your intentions and of your conduct, I shall cling to the old simple faith of my ancestors. I am a Puysange. I do not care for airdrawn abstractions, I do not palter with such dangerous subtleties as you suggest. I act with the forthright simplicity which becomes a gentleman, and I avenge my wounded honor.”

Whereupon, with due respect for the possible incandescence of a halo, Florian struck Hoprig on the jaw.

“Now, holy Michael aid me!” cried the saint, and he closed upon Florian, straightforwardly, without any miracle-working.

And as Hoprig spoke, there was a great peal of thunder. The crash, with its long shuddering reverberations was utterly appalling, but Hoprig was not appalled. Instead, he had drawn away from Florian, and Hoprig was now smiling deprecatingly.

“Dear me!” the saint observed, “but I am always forgetting. And now, I suppose, they will be vexed again.”

_28._

_Highly Ambiguous_

And then as the last shaken note of thunder died away, and as Melior fell to comforting the awakened baby, a tall warrior entered. He wore the most resplendent of ancient corselets, and embossed greaves protected his legs, but no helmet hid his flaxen curls. He now laid down an eight-sided shield, emblazoned argent with a cross gules, and he rustled his wings rather indignantly.

“Really, Hoprig,” said the new-comer, “this is carrying matters entirely too far; and you must not summon the princes of Heaven from their affairs to take part in your fisticuffs.”

“What more can you expect, good Michael, of misguided efforts to make saints of my people?”

This was a voice which was not unknown to Florian. And he saw that Janicot too had come,—not in that unreserved condition in which Florian had last seen him, but discreetly clothed and showing in everything as the neat burgess of Florian’s first encounter. And it was evident that this Janicot was not a stranger to St. Michael, either, when the archangel answered:

“It is well enough for you to grin, but with us the matter is no joke. This Hoprig has been duly canonized. When he invokes any of us we are under formal obligations to minister unto him, for he is entitled to all the perquisites of a saint: and he puts them to most inappropriate uses. For I must tell you—”

“Come, Monseigneur St. Michael,” observed Hoprig, waving toward Melior’s back, where she was comforting the mewing baby without the least attention to anything else,—“come, let us remember that a lady is present.”

“And for that matter, upon how many nights since you began going about earth—But I shall say no more upon a topic so painful. It is sufficient to state that the entire affair is most unsettling, and has displeased those high in authority. The Church has canonized you, and we have of course to stand by the Church, with which our relations have for some while been, in the main, quite friendly. I do not deny that if anything could have been done about you, just quietly—But we find the Church has provided no method whatever for removing saints from the Calendar—”

“You might remove him from earth, however,” Janicot suggested, helpfully. “A thunderbolt is not expensive.”

“It has been considered. But the effect, we believe, would not upon the whole be salutary. It would discourage the pious in their efforts toward sanctity to observe that bolt coming from, of all quarters, heaven. Besides, as a saint, he must, directly after being killed, ascend to eternal glory. You ought to understand that we would be the last persons actually to hurry him.”

“I think I see,” said Janicot. “You are bound to stand by the Church as faithfully as I do, if not through quite the same motives. Now, I hold no brief for this saint. He has swindled me,—cleverly enough, but with that lack of common honesty which as a rule lends ambiguity to pious actions,—out of Madame Melior’s child. I name only the mother, because, as I understand—?”

He had turned to Florian, and Janicot’s raised eyebrows were sententious.

Florian answered them, “Yes, Monsieur Janicot; it appears that I have acquired an increase of grace through works of supererogation.”

“Ah! and I had thought you were ardent! The child, in any event, is a detail about which there is no hurry. I am not fond of children myself—”

And Florian marvelled. “Then, why—?”

“It is merely that my servants have a use for them. Yes, my servants make them quite useful, by adding the juice of water parsnip and soot and cinquefoil and some other ingredients. And I endeavor to supply my servants’ needs. However!”—and Janicot waved the matter aside,—“when I am beaten I acknowledge it. The disenchanted princess remains yours: and I shall have no claim upon you until”—here Janicot smiled again,—“until the great love between your wife and you has approached a somewhat more authentic fruition.”

“Monsieur Janicot,” replied Florian, “you set the noble example of confessing when one is beaten. I was very careful when we made the compact which secured me this flawlessly beautiful lady as my wife. I am no longer careful. I cannot live with her for another year, not for a month, not for a half-hour! As you perceive, at the bare thought I grow hysterical. I tell you I cannot face the thought that this is the woman whom I have worshipped so long! I am a broken man, and I repent of every crime I committed in order to get her. Therefore let us make a second compact, my dear Monsieur Janicot, a compact by which she will be taken away from me! And you may name your own terms.”

“Ah, but you are all alike!” sighed Janicot. “You palter and haggle about the securing of your desires: but once you have your desires, no price appears too high to rid you of them. I cannot understand my people, and my failure quite to comprehend them troubles me: yet I could have told you, Florian, the first day we met, that it would come to this. But you were that droll creature the romantic, the man who cherishes superhuman ideals. And I really cannot put up with ideals—” Janicot ceased from talking half as if in meditation. He now glanced from one to another of the company with a sort of friendly petulance. “However, why is everybody looking so solemn? I like to have happy faces about me.”

“It is well enough for you to philosophize and grin,” Michael returned, in lordly indignation. “But grinning settles few religious difficulties, and philosophy muddles them worse than ever. Yet, if you ask why I look solemn, it is because this saint here has become a scandal on earth, a nuisance in heaven, and an impossibility in hell. And after all our conferences we can find no place for him anywhere to-day.”

“Yet the affair is really very simple,” replied Janicot. “Let Hoprig and Melior, and their child too, return to Brunbelois and to the old time before he was a saint. Let them return to the high place and to the old time that is overpast now everywhere except at Brunbelois. Thus earth will be rid of your scandal-breeding saint, and Hoprig of his halo and Florian of his threatened hysteria. And this Melior and this Hoprig will no longer be real persons, but will once more blend into an ancient legend of exceeding beauty and holiness. And nobody anywhere will be dissatisfied. This I suggest because I like to have happy faces about me, and happy faces everywhere, even in heaven.”

Michael said: “You are subtle. That is not our strong point, of course. Still, I really do wonder why, after so many conferences, we never thought of such an obvious solution as to antedate him at Brunbelois.”

And Michael looked at Hoprig.

Hoprig smiled, benevolently as always, but not in the least repentantly, and Hoprig said: “Why, after all, I have seen quite as much of this modern world as interests a saint in the prime of life; this halo certainly is, in ways we need not go into, sometimes in inconvenience; and there is no real pleasure in being ministered unto by unwilling angels. So that I am ready to leave it to the lady.”

Now Melior arose from beside the cradle, wherein the child was now once more asleep. And Melior looked at Florian, without saying anything: but she was smiling rather sadly; and Florian knew that nowhere in this world, at any time, had there been any person more lovely than was his disenchanted princess.

And Florian said: “A pest! but, in the name of earth and sky and sea, in the name of Heaven and all the fiends, let this be done! For the moment you are again a legend, madame, I shall recapture the dear misery of my love for you and for that perfect beauty which should be seen and not heard.”

“Indeed,” she replied, “I daresay that is the truth. So, for all our sakes, Hoprig and I will go back to the time before I married you: and then, on account of the baby, I suppose I will have to marry Hoprig, who at least takes women as he finds them.”

“You speak, I assume, metaphorically,” observed the saint, “but, in any case, I believe you exhibit good sense. So let us be going.”

Then Florian said farewell to Melior and to Hoprig also. Florian had put aside his dapper look: he had quite lost his usual air of tolerating a mixture of vexation and mirth: and for that moment he did not show in anything as a jaunty little person of the very highest fashion.

“Now that you two,” said Florian, “become again a legend and a symbol, I can believe in and love and worship you once more. It is in vain, it is with pitiable folly, that any man aspires to be bringing beauty and holiness into his daily living. These things are excellent for dilettanti to admire from afar. But they are not attainable, in any quantity that suffices. We needs believe in beauty: and there needs always flourish the notion that beauty exists in human living, so long as memory transfigures what is past, and optimism what is to come. And sometimes one finds beauty even in the hour which is passing, here and there, at wide intervals: but it is mixed—as inextricably as is mixed your speaking, bright-colored enemy of all romance,—with what is silly and commonplace and trivial.”

“It seems so very vexatious,” Melior stated, as if from depths of long deliberation, “when you can distinctly remember having brought your hat, to be quite unable—Yes, go on talking, Florian. It is on the peg by the door, and we are all listening.”

“And I would like to believe,” continued Florian, “that there is holiness in human living; but I at least have always found this also mixed with, I do not say hypocrisy, but ambiguity.... Mankind have their good points, but—to my knowledge,—no firm claim of any sort on admiration. I have been familiar with no person without finding that intimacy made some liking inevitable and any real respect preposterous. I deduce that in no virtue, and in no viciousness, does man excel: his endowments, either way, are inadequate. So holiness and beauty must remain to me just notions very pleasant to think about, and quite harmless to aim at if you like, if only because such aiming makes no noticeable difference anywhere. But they remain also unattained by mortal living. I do not know why this should be the law. I merely know that I overrode the law which says that only mediocrity may thrive in any place; and that I have been punished, with derision and with too clear seeing.”

“Yes, but,” said Janicot, “you are punishing everybody else with verbosity—”

“I also can perceive no reason, my son,” declared St. Hoprig, “for talking highflown bombast and attempting to drag an apologue from the snarls of a most annoying affair. It should be sufficient to reflect that your romantic hankerings have upset heaven, and have given rise—I gather from the sneers of this brown fiend,—to unfavorable comment even in hell. And there is simply no telling into what state my temple of Llaw Gyffes may have got during the months you have held me in this frivolous modern world.”

“Your temple of Llaw Gyffes!” said Florian, sadly. “But can it be, monsieur, that, after having been a saint of the Calendar, now that you return to heathen Brunbelois and the old time—?”

“My son, in any time,” Hoprig replied, “and in any place, my talents are such as qualify me only for the best-thought-of church. My nature craves stability and the support of tradition and of really nice people. New faiths sometimes allure unthinking hot-heads like that poor dear Horrig, but not ever me: for I find that any religion, when once it is endowed and made respectable, works out in its effect upon human living pretty much like any other religion. Meanwhile, of course, one naturally prefers to retain a solid position in society. So that really it does seem foolish to quarrel, in any time or place, with the best-thought-of faith. No, Florian, creeds shift and alter in everything except in promising salvation through church-work: but the prelate remains immortal. And I will tell you another thing, Florian, that you should remember when we are gone: and it is that all men and all women are human beings, and that nothing can be done about it.” And Hoprig at this point regarded Florian for some while with a sort of pity. “In any case,” the saint said then, “do you look out for another celestial patron, and for a second father in the spirit, now that sunset approaches, and this is the last cloud going west.”

And Melior took up the still sleeping child, without saying anything, but smiling very lovelily at Florian: and she and Hoprig entered into a golden cloud, and these two went away from Florian forever. And they went as a blurred shining: for Florian was recollecting a child’s desire to be not in all unworthy of these bright, dear beings; and Florian somewhat wistfully recalled that brave aspiring, and that glad ignorance, which nothing now could ever reawaken any more.

_29._

_The Wonder Words_

“But now,” said Florian, “what now is to become of me, who have no longer any standards of beauty and holiness?” And he looked expectantly from Janicot to the archangel, and back again, to see when they would begin their battling for possession of the Duke of Puysange. Both spirits seemed almost unflatteringly unbellicose.

“I have no instructions about you,” replied Michael. “I did not come hither in the way of official duty, but only at the summons of that fellow—It is really a very great comfort to reflect that, now he has gone back to the old time before he was canonized, he is no longer a saint! Still, as for you, your ways have been atrocious, and it is hardly doubtful that your end should be the same.”

Florian at that had out the magic sword Flamberge. “Then, Monseigneur St. Michael, logic prompts one to make the best of this: and I entreat that you do me the honor of crossing blades with me, so that I may perish not ignobly.”

“Come,” Michael said, “so this shrimp challenges an archangel! That is really a fine gesture.”

“Yes, there is spirit in this romantic,” Janicot declared. “It seems to take the place of his intelligence. I cannot see it matters what becomes of the creature, but, after all, old friends will welcome any excuse to chat together. See, here is excellent wine in the saint’s cupboard, and over a cup of it let us amicably decide what we should do with this little Florian.”

“It is well thought of,” Michael estimated, “for I have been working all day upon the new worlds behind Fomalhaut, with the air full of comet dust. Yes, that rapscallion Hoprig fetched me a long way, and I am thirsty.”

So these two sat down at the table to settle the fate of Florian. Janicot poured for Florian also: and Florian took the proffered cup, and a chair too, which he modestly placed against the log-and-plaster wall at some distance from his judges.

Florian’s judges made an odd pair. For resplendent Michael showed in everything as divine, and in his face was the untroubled magnanimity of a great prince of Heaven. But Janicot had the appearance of a working man, all a sober and practical brown, which would show no stains after the performance of any necessary labor, and his face was the more shrewd.

“First,” said Janicot, “let us drink. That is the proper beginning of any dispute, for it makes each think his adversary a splendid fellow, it promotes confidence and candor alike.”

“Nobody should lack confidence and candor when it comes to dealing with sin,” replied Michael: and with one heroic draught he emptied his cup.

Florian sipped his more tentatively: for this seemed uncommonly queer wine.

“Sin,” Janicot said now, as if in meditation, “is a fine and impressive monosyllable.”

“Sin,” Michael said, with sternness, “is that which is forbidden by the word of God.”

“But, to be sure!” Florian put in. “Sin is a very grave matter: and to expiate it requires stained windows and candles and, above all, repentance—”

“Ah, but a word,” said Janicot, “has no inherent meaning, it has merely the significance a mutual agreement arbitrarily attaches to that especial sound. Let me refill your cup, which I perceive to be empty: and, Monsieur the Duke, do you stop talking to your judges. That much—to resume,—is true of all words. And the word of your god has been so variously pronounced, my good Michael, it has been so diversely interpreted, that, really, men begin to wonder—”

“I did not sit down,” cried Michael, “to hear blasphemies, but to settle the doom of this sinner. Nor will I chop logic with you. I am a blunt soldier, and you are subtle. Yes, the world knows you are subtle, but how far has your subtlety got you? Why, it has got you as far as from heaven to hell.”

Florian vastly admired that just and pious summing-up as he leaned back in his chair, and looked toward Janicot. Florian was feeling strangely complacent, though, for Hoprig’s wine was extraordinarily potent tipple to have come from the cupboard of a saint.

“Ah, friend,” returned Janicot, smiling, “and do you really put actual faith in that sensational modern story that I was an angel who rebelled against your Jahveh?”

“It was before my time, of course,” Michael conceded. “I only know that my Lord created me with orders to conquer you, who call yourself the Prince of this World. So I did this, though, to give the devil his due, it was no easy task. But that is far-off stuff: a soldier bears no malice when the fighting is over: and I drink to you.”

“Your health, bright adversary! Yet what if I were not conquered, but merely patient? Why should not I, who have outlived so many gods, remain as patient under the passing of this tribal god come out of Israel as I stayed once under Baal and Beltane? Both of these have had their adorers and tall temples hereabouts: and Mithra and Zeus and Osiris and I know not how many thousands of other beautiful and holy deities have had their dole of worship and neglect and oblivion. Now I have never been omnipotent, I am not worshipped in any shining temple even to-day; but always I have been served.”

Florian, through half-closed eyelids,—for he felt a trifle drowsy after that extraordinary wine,—was admiring the curious proud look which had come into the brown face of Janicot. Florian began complacently to allow this fiend had his redeeming points. This Janicot was quite distinguished looking.

“For I,” said Janicot, “am the Prince of this World, not to be ousted: and I have in my time, good Michael, had need to practise patience. You think with awed reverence of your Jahveh: and that in your station is commendable. Yet you should remember, too, that to me, who saw but yesterday your Jahveh’s start in life as a local storm-god upon Sinai, he is just the latest of many thousands of adversaries whom I have seen triumph and pass while I stayed patient under all temporary annoyances. For in heaven they keep changing dynasties, and every transient ruler of heaven is bent upon making laws for my little kingdom. Oh, I blame nobody! The desire is natural in omnipotence: and many of these laws I have admired, as academic exercises. The trouble seemed to be that they were drawn up in heaven, where there is nothing quite like the nature of my people—”

“A very sinful people!” said Michael.

“There, as in so many points, bright adversary, our opinions differ. You perceive only that they are not what, in accordance with your master’s theories, they ought to be. I am more practical: I accept them as they are, and I make no complaint. That which you call their lust and wantonness, I know to be fertility—” And Janicot spread out both hands. “But it is an old tale. God after god has set rules to bridle and to change the nature of my people. Meanwhile I do not meddle with their natures, I urge them to live in concord with their natures, and to make the most of my kingdom. To be content and to keep me well supplied with subjects, is all that any reasonable prince would require. And as for sin, I have admitted it is a fine word. But the wages of sin—in any event, very often,” said Janicot, and with a smile he illuminated the parenthesis,—“is life.”

“To all this,” said Michael, extending his empty cup, “the answer is simple. You are evil, and you lie.”

“Before your days, before there were men like those of to-day,” said Janicot, indulgently, as he poured sombre wine, “and when the dwarf peoples served me in secret places, even they had other official gods. When your Jahveh is forgotten, men will yet serve me, if but in secrecy. Creeds pass, my friend, just as that little Hoprig said. And it is true, too, that the prelate remains always, as my technical opponent. But the lingham and the yoni do not pass, they do not change, they keep their strong control of all that lives: and these serve me alone.”

“If my Lord passes,” Michael answered, very nobly and very simply, “I pass with Him. We that love Him could then desire no other fate. Meanwhile I have faith in Him, and in His power and in His wisdom, and my faith contents me.”

“Faith!” Janicot said, rather wistfully. “Ah, there we encounter another fine word, a wonder word: and I admit that your anodyne is potent. But it is not to my taste. However, this wine here is emphatically to my taste. So let us drink!”

“It is a good wine. But it begets a treacherous softness of heart and an unsuitable, a quite un-Hebraic tendency to let bygones be bygones. I mean, unsuitable for one in my service. For, after all, old adversary, without intending any disrespect, of course, we were originally for martial law and military strictness, for smiting hip and thigh when the least thing went wrong: and in spite of our recent coming over to these new Christian doctrines—And, by the way, that reminds me of this sinner here. We seem to keep wandering from the point.”

They had looked toward Florian, who discreetly remained lying back in his chair, watching them between nearly closed lids.

“Indeed, we have so utterly neglected him that he has gone to sleep. So let us drink, and be at ease,” said Janicot, “now that we are relieved of his eavesdropping. This little Florian annoys me, rather. For he makes something too much of logic: so he rebels against your creed of faith and of set laws to be obeyed, asking Why? Did you never hear the creature crying out, Let us be logical! in, of all places, this universe? And he rebels against my creed, which he believes a mere affair of the lingham and the yoni, saying This is not enough. Such men as he continue to dream, my friend, and I confess such men are dangerous: for they obstinately aspire toward a perfectibility that does not exist, they will be content with nothing else; and when your master and I do not satisfy the desire which is in their dreams, they draw their appalling logical conclusions. To that humiliation, such as it is, I answer Drink! For the Oracle of Bacbuc also—that oracle which the little curé of Meudon was not alone in misunderstanding,—that oracle speaks the true wonder word.”

Michael had listened, with one elbow on the table, and with one hand propping his chin. Michael had listened with a queer mingling, in his frank face, of admiration and distrust.

The archangel now slightly raised his head, just free of his hand, and he asked rather scornfully, “But what have we to do with their dreams?”

“A great deal. Men go enslaved by this dream of beauty: but never yet have they sought to embody it, whether in their wives or in their equally droll works of art, without imperfect results, without results that were maddening to the dreamer. Men are resolved to know that which they may whole-heartedly worship. No, they are not bent upon emulating what they worship: it is, rather, that holiness also is a dream which allures mankind resistlessly. But thus far,—by your leave, good Michael,—they have found nothing to worship which bears logical inspection much better than does Hoprig. The dangerous part of all this is that men, none the less, still go on dreaming.”

“They might be worse employed.” Michael himself refilled his cup. “For I could tell you—”

“Pray spare my blushes! Yes, they obstinately go on dreaming. Your master is strong, as yet, and I too am strong, but neither of us is strong enough to control men’s dreams. Now, the dreaming of men—mark you, I do not say of humankind, for women are rational creatures,—has an aspiring which is ruthless. It goes beyond decency, it aspires to more of perfectibility than any god has yet been able to provide or even to live up to. So this quite insane aspiring first sets up beautiful and holy gods in heaven, then in the dock; and, judging all by human logic, decrees this god not to be good enough. Thus their logic has dealt with Baal and Beltane and Mithra; thus it will deal—” Janicot very courteously waved a brown and workmanlike hand. “But let us not dwell upon reflections that you may perhaps find unpleasant. In the meanwhile, me too this human dreaming thrusts aside, as not good enough.”

It was plain that Michael distrusted Janicot in all and yet in some sort admired him most unwillingly. Michael asked, with a reserved smiling, “What follows, O subtle one?”

“It follows that all gods must pass until—perhaps—a god be found who satisfies the requirements of this disastrously exigent human dreaming. It follows that I must perforce go quietly about my kingdom because of this insane toplofty dreaming.” And Janicot sighed. “Yes, it is humiliating: but I also have my anodyne, I have my wonder word. And it is Drink!”

“Of course it would be,” Michael replied, with the most dignified of hiccoughs, “since drunkenness is a particularly low form of sin.”

“The drinking I advocate is not merely of the grape. No, it is from the cup of space that I would have all drink, accepting all that is, in one fearless draught. Some day, it may be, my people here will attain to my doctrine: and even these fretful little men will see that life and death, and the nature of their dreams, and of their bodies also, are but ingredients in a cup from which the wise drink fearlessly.”

Janicot had risen now. He came toward Florian, and stood there, looking down. And Florian discreetly continued his mimicry of untroubled slumber.

“Meanwhile he does not drink, he merely dreams, this little Florian. He dreams of beauty and of holiness fetched back by him to an earth which everywhere fell short of his wishes, fetched down by him intrepidly from that imagined high place where men attain to their insane desires. He dreams of aspiring and joy and color and suffering and unreason, and of those quaint taboos which you and he call sin, as being separate things, not seeing how all blends in one vast cup. Nor does he see, as yet, that this blending is very beautiful when properly regarded, and very holy when approached without human self-conceit. What would you have, good Michael? He and his like remain as yet just fretted children a little rashly hungry for excitement.”

Michael stood now beside Janicot. Michael also was looking at Florian, not unkindlily.

“Yes,” Michael said. “Yes, that is true. He is yet a child.”